The Palestine Question in Maps
ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES Administrative Boundaries under the Ottomans Prior to the British Mandate, Ottoman Pal- VILAYET OF ALEPPO Main City estine was made up of three Sanjaks, or Aleppo Sanjak Boundary sub-provinces, each ruled by a Mutasarrif Vilayet Boundary Sanjak of Aleppo (provincial governor). Of these, the Sanjak Railway of Acre and that of Balqa’, or Nablus, fell Latakia within the larger Vilayet (province) of Bei- Sanjak rut, while the largest, Jerusalem -owing to of Sanjak its religious and historical status- was in- Latakia Hama of dependent, with its governor responsible Hama directly to the Sultan. Mediterranean The British administered Palestine Sea Sanjak of Homs through a series of 16 sub-districts, each Tripoli responsible to the High Commissioner in Tripoli the capital, Jerusalem. These sub-districts were adjusted once, in the late 1930s, Sanjak but remained operational throughout the of Mandate. Following the 1947-1949 War, Beirut Jordan administered the West Bank ac- Beirut cording to similar set of sub-districts, plac- Sanjak of VILAYET OF BEIRUT ing the villages surrounding its 11 principal Damascus towns under local governors responding Damascus to Amman via Jerusalem, which remained the Palestinian capital and was also de- Sur clared the ‘second capital’ of Jordan.
Acre Israel’s occupation in 1967 saw these rea- Sanjak sonably organic sub-divisions replaced of Haifa by a streamlined system of military ruled Acre through seven large governorates, which denied the existence of Palestinian Jeru-
Sanjak salem both as a city and as Palestine’s Jordan River of Balqa' central administrative sub-division. (Nablus) Jaffa In 1995, the Palestinian Authority adopted Sanjak of Hauran new administrative sub-divisions, return- ing to boundaries more in keeping both Jerusalem with historical fact and local Palestinian Gaza socio-economic and cultural factors, form- Independent
Sanjak of Dead Sea ing an 11 governorate system in the West Bank and dividing, for the first time, the Jerusalem V I L A Y E T O F S Y R I A populous Gaza Strip into five governor- ates. Each PA governorate was placed under a local authority which administered both Area A and B through branches of ‘national’ ministerial and welfare services, except in the re-designated Jerusalem Sanjak of Ma'an governorate, where the lack of an Area A presence limited PA governmental activity.
-/;26
Al-Aqaba
Map: PASSIA, 2002
180